We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jason Payne a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jason, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Is your team able to work remotely? If so, how have you made it work? What, if any, have been the pitfalls? What have been the non-obvious benefits?

Having started Estabrook Road Records during the peak of the COVID outbreak it was important to us to find a way to be as effective as possible while still scouting and signing recording artist from not only locally & around the country; but also around the world. As such, it made the most sense to hire A&R’s that are located everywhere and not just centralized to our office. This allowed us to turn a bad situation into a good one by doing so. Having reps everywhere we are able to scout for new talent more effectively than if we were centralized. We now have artist around the world that are part of Estabrook Road Records and the ones that are from other countries are also the ones that are most successful with us as well.

Jason, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Jason Payne is the proprietor of Estabrook Road. With over 25 years of experience in the music industry. Working with such groups as Onyx, New Edition and Prince as well as being an A&R with Capitol Records. He is the driving force behind the direction and purpose of Estabrook Road Records and he is passionate about helping up and coming artist succeed in the music industry.

Estabrookroad is a full service record label and artist development firm which specializes in helping artist increase their fan base and improve their branding through a myriad of industry standard & practical practices.

At Estabrook Road Records we pride ourselves on filling the gap for new artist through a milieu approach, allowing them to not only build but sustain a larger fan base which is done though targeted ad-marketing, consistent social media engagement and timely releases of content which keeps fans engaged with the artist content.

We are of the belief that music is a journey and as such we create the space which allows fans to take that journey with the artist that they connect with the most and are apt to stay with them for the long haul.

We are most proud of the successes we have seen with our artist which have allowed them to work within a space that optimizes their reach and level of success and we look forward to a bright future of continued success and accolades for the artist we consider unique and special.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

The music and entertainment industry and notoriously known for being cut-throat and this is something that I have never subscribed to. I think that honesty and integrity get you a lot further that the former. As such I have always operated from a position of being above board. I have seen my share of losses and setbacks because of this approach but at the end of the day I always know that I have done my very best and I rest well knowing that being altruistic has been more beneficial to me than not. In this industry your name is everything and I can say with out any reservation that I have a name that I am proud of.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Pivoting is a constant in the music industry. It is something that we are accustomed to and do often. There is always a “new wave” or “latest & greatest idea” that we need to keep up with. I would have to say that the most recent example of this was the NFT period that happened not too long ago. NFT’s we posed to be the next big thing and there we new companies popping up pairing NFT with new artist releases and a value added benefit. We vested strongly into a NFT company called EQ which was founded by Ashanti with the promise that they would do all the heavy lifting and all we needed to do was put together the packages (New Music Release associated with NFT’s). Needless to say that EQ was a complete fly by night organization that closed down just as fast as it started up. This left us holding the bag and responsibility to service the fans that purchased the NFT’s on our own. With some quick thinking and support from the artist that we had NFT’s with we were able to turn a negative into a positive by providing the buyers with unique access to events and other promotional items that made up for the loss that they incurred. At the end of the day all were satisfied and the lesson learned was more like a reminded that if something sounds too good to be true it usually is.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://estabrookroad.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/estabrookroadrecords/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/estabrookroad
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/estabrookroad
• Youtube: @erthelabel